


Thursday Afternoon

by Gingerhermit



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ficlet, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9385397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gingerhermit/pseuds/Gingerhermit
Summary: This is a very short little ficlet that I posted on Tumblr on a whim. I hope you enjoy.





	

It was on a Thursday afternoon, at precisely four twenty p.m., when John turned to Sherlock and said, “Which wallpaper should we put upstairs in the nursery? I’d just as well steer clear of anything to do with fish.”

They’d spent the entire morning and the lion’s share of the afternoon finishing up applying the wallpaper to the sitting room. It had taken ages to hunt down the exact print from before, but in the end they’d managed it and when Sherlock stood back to take it all in he felt a pang of something fiercely nostalgic.

“Sorry, what?” Sherlock’s attention returned to John and hung there, as it often did. John stood just to the left of a beam of fading light from the windows, his denim shirt and jeans speckled with paint and dust. A piece of his hair had shaken loose a bit from the frankly alarming amount of product he’d been putting in it to hang down into his face. Despite the flecks of grey already creeping into his sandy hair, John’s face looked as young and happy as he’d ever seen it. Had for weeks now.

“Rosie’s nursery. Upstairs.” John was looking at him, patiently waiting for him to catch up while Sherlock’s mind furiously stumbled over the hundreds of details strewn in the way. Sherlock blinked once. And then again.

“Oh.” It was obvious now. “You sold the house. That was where you went yesterday morning, meeting with the estate agent to finalize the papers. Where you had the disappointing coffee.”

“We’ll need to be out by the end of the month. I figured we’d have everything sorted here by then. Everything’s coming along.” John was utterly matter of fact. He’d never asked Sherlock if he could move back in, and Sherlock knew why. The answer was a foregone conclusion. It had always been there, gathering dust and waiting for the question to finally arrive.

There was something else. Something else that…. “If Rosie’s room is upstairs, then where…”

John’s eyes were smiling. He was still waiting. Sherlock swallowed hard. “Oh.”

 “Yeah.”

That, too, it seemed was a foregone conclusion. This one had been waiting for Sherlock to find it for a very long time, waiting so long it had nearly given up hope entirely. He cradled it carefully in his mind, treating it like a precious thing that was sure to break if handled roughly.

He crossed the space between them in two long strides. John’s face fit perfectly in his hands, and kissing him was both the question and the answer to the only problem that had ever mattered at all.


End file.
